


Solutions

by pirategirljack



Series: Weekly Fic Project 2017 [13]
Category: Dark Matter (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, OT3, angst? a little?, body-sharing poly, i'm so about ot3s lately omg, miniship alert, solve it with poly, weekly fic project 2017
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-18 18:16:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11296110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirategirljack/pseuds/pirategirljack
Summary: Android has an answer to Three's problem.Wrote this while making dinner, since cooking chicken patties isn't exactly, like, *riveting*.





	1. Chapter 1

“Three? May we speak? In private?”

The Android was impossible to read, her face calm and still as she waited. Three glanced at the others at the table to see if they had any idea what was up, but Two shrugged and Adrian looked really interested in a way that looked like he didn't know squat, so Three lifted one shoulder in an “I guess” sort of gesture, downed his drink in one swallow, and left his plate. He made sure to give everyone else at the table the eye, though.

“We’re not going to eat your food!” Two called after him as he followed Android out into the deserted halls. A second later, Adrian added, "Much. Probably." and then made a yelping sound like Two had swatted him. Three grinned a little to himself.

But Anedroid kept going until they were in a cargo bay, and not the main one, either, one almost no one ever went.

“Android? What's up? This is getting a little weird.”

“I want to be sure no one will overhear in case--”

“In case what? You're really freaking me out now.”

She tilted her head at him. “I'm unsure how you will respond to my suggestion. You continually surprise me.”

It must be something important, he knew now, so he made an effort to calm himself and still any nervous figiting that might be going on by crossing his arms over his chest. “Shoot.”

“I'm not here to attack you or harm you in anyway, and if you thought I might it's rather reckless of you to--”

“Android. It's an expression. Say what you brought me here to say.”

“Yes. Of course. I am--distracted.”

She looked more distressed then distracted, which was saying something since she usually looked about the same no matter what was going on in her pretty artificial head, and that made him worry. He touched her elbow. “What is it? What's wrong?”

She didn't startle, because Androids don't have a startle reflex, but she slid her head in a smooth arc to look at where his hand rested on her arm and there was a beat or two before she looked back up at him. When she did, she looked a little lost, and something in her look made his chest ache, just a little.

“I think I have a solution for your problem.”

“My problem?”

“Sarah.”

A weight dropped inside him, but it didn't hit bottom yet. Too defensively, he said, “What about her?”

She broke eye contact when he pulled his hand back.

“She is not a native AI. I have spoken to her; she isn't happy where she is.”

“She doesn't have a body, though. What else can she do but get used to it?”

That unwavering eyecontact again, then away. “Do you know how complex my systems are?” 

“Um...no?”

“I am as complex as the ship’s systems, but more efficient, more contained. My neural net is seven times more complicated than a typical human brain. I believe that I have the capacity to host her consciousness for short amounts of time, perhaps up to a few days.” 

“Anne--”

“I have run the simulations and I am reasonably sure that I can modify my systems to offer a more equitable share after I have experienced how her unusual programming interacts with my neural net and my essential subroutines--”

He caught her by her shoulders to get her to stop talking, and lifted her chin until she had to look him in the face. “Anne, I can't ask this of you.”

“You aren't asking anything. I'm offering. You called me Anne.”

“Did I?” A strange pause, and she studied him. He was close enough that he could see tiny lights shifting around in the depths of her eyes; is that what processing looked like? Like stars?

“It's not an imposition. I offer of my own free will. She's unhappy. You're unhappy. It makes me...effectively unhappy to see how unhappy you are. I may be able to help both of you.”

“This is--this is too much.”

“I have other solutions, if this one proves untenable. She could be given the access of the ship’s onboard AI slots, which are currently unused, and then her body would be the ship, but that offers a different set of constraints on your relationship. Or we could acquire an android without a pre-determined neural net and we can build one for her unique programming, but I have never done such a thing and the risks are comparatively higher--”

“Android. Thank you. Really. I just--I can't--”

“Oh.”

“What oh?”

“She would look like me. You don't want to see me.”

“That's not--”

“I won't bother you again. I'm sorry. I was foolish to say anything. Excuse me, I believe the relays may need a fresh alignment.”

“Android--Anne, come on.”

She didn't look back. And he felt like an absolute ass. She was made in a lab, she'd outlast all of them most likely, but she had feelings and opinions and a good heart--or whatever served as a heart--and he'd just trampled on all of them. She was so...gentle. He'd seen her shoot a dozen guys with a gun in each hand without so much as a twinge of regret to protect her crew, and he'd managed to make her feel bad by being really stupid with explaining things clearly.

"Shit," he said.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah as different ideas.

“Don’t you think you should have, I don’t know, talked to me about this before shutting down the idea?”

“I didn’t--”

“Think about it? Yeah, that’s obvious.” She wasn't mad, really, but Three saw that he shouldn't have presumed.

“Sarah--I didn’t want to--well, to risk you. You’ve already lost so much. I’ve already lost you twice.”

She stilled, stopped pacing, moved slowly over to him, and he could feel her thinking. He had no idea if that was something from before his memory wipe, a deep knowledge that couldn’t be erased, or if it was a side effect of the un-place he was in, but it was as much real as anything else was here. “But it’s my life,” she said quietly. “I can’t stay here. In this box. With no view and no way out, waiting on people to drop in like Rapunzel in a tower.”

“Babe--”

“There’s no time here. Nothing changes. I don’t sleep, I don’t eat, it’s always just now and I’m always waiting. I’m going to go insane, Marcus. Please.”

He took her face in his hands, and her dark eyes were so lost, so trapped, almost fever-bright despite her calm, and he knew he couldn’t say no again. “Okay.”

\---

He went to find Android, but for half an hour, it was like she was moving just to avoid him before he managed to catch her in an access hatch that had only one way in or out. “I’m sorry,” he said, before anything else. “None of that came out the way it was meant to.”

She blinked a few times, processing. “You never apologize.”

“I do so. Sometimes.”

"No."

"Well I am now!"

“You need something.”

He felt his whole body slump, and she tilted her head at him. “Look, Sarah wants to give it a try. You were right--she isn’t happy. It’s like the worst case of cabin fever ever, and I can’t--I have no right to--stop her from trying whatever it takes to be comfortable in whatever this is that she has instead of a normal life now. So will you still help?”

She had a wrench in her hand, and if she was human, he might have thought that look was her trying to convince herself not to hit him with it. But then she quietly put her tools away, straightened up, and said, “Yes.”

“So what do we need to do. To get ready. Hit me.”

“All your expressions have to do with personal bodily harm.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll work on that, just tell me what to do.”

“There isn’t much you can do. Almost all of the preparation is digital, in my mind and in the ship’s computers.”

“Oh.”

“But you can help me gather the items I’ll need to build the interface,” she said, and it sounded like she was inventing jobs to make him feel better, which should have annoyed him except he was just happy to have something to do with his hands.

\---

It took three days and he spent almost all of them with Android; she worked tirelessly, since she literally couldn’t tire, and he slept on the floor or the medbay bed when he was too tired to keep going and she refused him a stimulant. When she was done, it looked like her charging cradle, but with a bunch of other stuff going on in at least five points along her spine and around her head.

“What now?”

“Now I must configure.”

“For how long?”

“Unknown.”

He frowned, disappointed. She saw it.

“Perhaps another three days. Longer if I’m needed in the meantime.”

“We’ll have to make sure you’re not needed then.” He tried for charming, but she looked away, and the words were out before he remembered that she worried about being unneeded, unwanted, obsolete. “No, that’s not--”

“I know.”

And then she was in the charger, the docks clunking into place up her spine, the crown of new tech around her head sinking into her skin that looked so real but didn’t bleed. It made him uncomfortable how vulnerable she looked when she closed her eyes.

“You’re sure you’ll be alright?”

She opened her eyes to look at him again. “As sure as I can be. This is...a reasoned risk, but still a risk.”

He hesitated while she settled back in...and then he squeezed her hand. She was effectively unconscious as soon as her eyes closed, but her fingers closed around his in return, and they stayed linked until he’d stepped far enough away that he couldn’t reach her without risking pulling her out of her plugs--and he had no idea what damage that might do. He thought her neutral expression shifted ever so slightly toward a smile, but he couldn’t be sure.

\---

“How long has it been?” Sarah asked when he went back to her room. She was right; nothing had changed, not even the height of the candles, despite how their flames flickered as he moved past them.

“Three days.”

“How much longer?”

“Maybe three more. If nothing interrupts her.”

“A week. How long was I here before this idea?”

“I don’t know, maybe two months? Five didn’t tell us right away when you came online, I’m not sure.”

“Came online.”

“Woke up. Like a person. Like how people wake up.”

She smiled, and he swore the room got a little brighter, felt a little larger. “It’s okay. I know what I am as much as I know who I am.”

“It’s soon, Babe. I promise.”

“I believe you.”

\---

In her sleep, Android was building a bridge. Three watched it on the screen she’d attached to the outside of the configuration chamber, little blocks of light moving around between the multidimensional cube that was Sarah and the collection of interlocking shapes that were Android. The rows of shifting code that marked the ship’s programming moved around, too, all of them a little at a time, building pathways, unbuilding ones that made the lights flicker or made the gravity go weird, branching out like the roots of a tree.

On the second day, he watched simulations playing out in separate screens over the corners of the main one, most of them resulting in failure at the beginning--sometimes for one, sometimes for both, a few times for the whole ship. But as time passed and he watched impatiently, less catastrophic failures happened in the simulations, and then almost none.

On the third day, Android opened her eyes.

“I am ready for the test.”

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my weekly fic project that has long since become not weekly at all??? Also the first one that's definitely going to be more than one chapter, and I'm unsure if I'll count additional chapters as weekly fics or just more work on this one. As always, feel free to leave prompts, and if I write them I'll give you the link to make finding them easier! (also, not just this fandom: look through my stuff to see the other fandoms I write for!)
> 
> \---
> 
> I have a Patreon to make writing easier! It doesn't mention fanfic bc I don't want to get sued, but I'm totally planning to write quick fics there as freebies, and fic counts as writing--I use it as, like, exercise and warmup. Go here, if that's your thing: www.patreon.com/SamanthaHolloway


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